I was talking with a co-worker yesterday, and he mentioned that when he did his undergraduate degree in social work, he had to do practicums, and he was working with people who were victims of crimes, mostly domestic violence and abuse. He said that the part that was hard to see, and what eventually made him not go into the social work field, was the way that he saw people returning to the abusive situations. They went back because they couldn’t see what their lives would look like in ten years – they couldn’t visualize what life looked like for them outside of this abusive situation, and couldn’t make the leap to leave because of that.
I responded saying that it’s true for most people, I think, not just people in abusive relationships, but for all of us – we can’t know what our life will be like in ten years. There are actions that we could take today that, when compounded, would make a huge difference in our lives in ten years. Most of us don’t take them because we don’t have the ability to see that far in the future – we aren’t motivated by the way our lives will be in ten years because it doesn’t seem fully real.
I know that there are studies in this – researchers show participants an aged version of themselves, then give them the opportunity to save for retirement, and the people who saw the aged version of themselves are more likely to save for retirement. But how do we apply that for other areas of our lives? How do we make ourselves take other steps to have the lives that we want to have in ten years, on a regular basis, now?
Money is actually the area of my life where I have the easiest time taking action now to be where I want to be in the future – it’s just math, I can do the compound interest formula and figure out that if I want to have X amount of money in 2031, I need to invest X per month at a given percent interest.
Here’s an example: I’m in a relationship right now. And in ten years, I want to be in a stable, loving, healthy long-term relationship. Obviously, this is not solely dependent on me and my choices – my partner is also an active part of making this happen. What are the actions that I need to do now, in order to set us up for having that stable, loving, healthy relationship in ten years?
My health is another area that I think about a lot. I work out pretty regularly, but I don’t eat in a way that’s terribly healthy. When I’m feeling particularly motivated, I’ll meal prep and cook for myself every night, but lately school has been stressful and there have been many days when I don’t cook anything for myself and I end up eating chips and candy at school that were intended to be incentives for students. I know that I should eat in a way that is more consistently healthy, and I know that this will have long-term benefits for my health, but it’s really hard for me to do that on a daily basis.
This vision of myself in ten years is fuzzy and fragmented – I know I want to be healthy, I know I want to be in a great relationship, and I know I want to have invested money – but I don’t know exactly what my life looks like, or what it looks like for me to take those steps that I need to take to get there.
Ten years ago, I was eighteen – I was in my first semester of art school, I was living in Grand Rapids, I was blogging, I worked part time at the KCAD library and worked at summer camp. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, and living in a house full of roommates. Where I am right now – working in school leadership, having a master’s degree, living in Nashville, having run four half marathons – none of that was anything I could have envisioned for myself ten years ago.